This shows a sketch made of the Sunspot by The English astronomer Richard Carrington. He sketched the massive sunspot complex on September 1, 1859 that produced the Carrington Event in 1859. That sketch is imposed on today's Sun and is placed right above AR 4294-4296 so you can see the size comparison.
An extremely large patch of dark spots, called sunspots or a sunspot complex, showed up on our nearest star, our Sun and they are about 90% the size of the sunspots that cause the 1859 Carrington Event. The Carrington Event is the biggest solar storm on record.
When sunspots get this big and are magnetically tangled, they can launch outward super powerful solar flares called X-class flares and also shoot out massive clouds of solar material known as a conronal mass ejection or CME. It's not usually a good thing if a massive CME is released and it is release and heads directly face on towards the Earth.
IF, and that is the critical thing, IF a large CME hits the Earth's magnetic field, it can cause geomagnetic storms. These storms can disrupt our satilletes, GPS, radio communication, Internet and even mess with power grids that haven't been reinforced.
AR 4294-4296 are capable of producing strong CME's. Scientists currently are saying that there is no strong evidence yet that this sunspot will trigger a Carrington Level event causing castophere. So beware of the doom and gloomers that are going to pop up and say this is the end of the world.
The best case scenerio is we just might get some very very nice auroras out of this ie Northern Lights IF any storms are produced from AR 4294-4296 and that CME hits Earth at the right angle.
Scientists and astronomers are watching and monitoring AR 4294-4296's magnetic structure, flare activity and any CEM's that might be Earth-directed. Size along isn't enough. The orientation and timing matter very much. For more info head over to Eadsy Astronomy and see my video and post for info on this large sunspot! LINK
